


"cursed with good looks"

by graves_expectations



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mutual Pining, references to past Graves/multiple others, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 02:16:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10652862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graves_expectations/pseuds/graves_expectations
Summary: He would never understand that phrase. Not now he'd lost his so spectacularly.





	"cursed with good looks"

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Français available: [Beauté Fatale](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16201796) by [glittertrashcan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittertrashcan/pseuds/glittertrashcan)



> First work in this fandom! And it's only been... almost five months to the day since the film came out!

The phrase ‘cursed with good looks’ was not one Percival Graves had ever understood.

He’d been comfortably aware of his own attractiveness since Ilvermorny, after a few early years of the typical adolescent atrocities. He had them all: pimples, growth spurts that left him gangly and awkward, patchy body hair, and a voice that cracked and broke at the most inopportune moments. And then, all of a sudden, he was sixteen and then seventeen, more man than boy and those teenage concerns dropped away. He ended up tall but not too tall, broad in the shoulders and trim in the waist, and his face (once round and cooed over only by half-blind Aunts) became sharp and the subject of many, many classroom daydreams.

In his final year, when his teachers were despairing over what _else_ they could teach perpetually-bored Percival Graves and power-hungry Seraphina Picquery, he learned Legilimency. While Seraphina had the better knack for keeping her mind closed to intrusion with Occlumency, Percival found _he_ had the greater talent for delving into the minds of others. An aspiring Auror for years by then, he knew the skill would be a brilliant asset for his chosen career. And so he practiced whenever he could.

Funnily enough, every girl he managed to coax into meeting his eyes in the hallways had the same dizzy thoughts running through their heads.

 _Merlin, he’s looking at_ me _. He’s so handsome, I wonder if he would…_

Some of the boys had it just as bad, which Percival found more gratifying, given that his preferences leaned that bit more towards them. Still, he wasn’t above using his charms on both girls and boys, and he even realised that some of his _teachers_ were swayed by his requests where they wouldn’t be by the majority of his classmates. He took to flattering his Potions teacher in particular, knowing that it was probably his weakest subject. Sure enough, extra help and time were given freely by the witch who continually told herself that she was hot only because she was surrounded by _boiling cauldrons._

It amused him and he started to treat it like a game. He enjoyed knowing that one quirk of his lips would get him another hour to study in the library even after it was meant to be closed. He loved rolling up his sleeves in class and hearing a few minds woefully realise how distracted they were going to be for the remainder of the lesson.

“You’re a menace, Graves,” Seraphina told him through a laugh one summer afternoon, after he’d winked at a group of girls passing their usual study spot and caused a minor stir. The giggles made him smirk and he’d proceeded to run a hand (quite unnecessarily) through his hair with a sigh, then rubbed his thumb along his lower lip as if deep in contemplation before licking one long finger to help him turn the pages of his Advanced Potions book.

“Don’t you get tired of being objectified?” Seraphina asked, rolling her eyes.

“Are you joking? This face is getting me ahead. You’re a far better student than me, do you think I’d be matching your grades as well as I am if I didn’t have teachers wanting to do some very inappropriate things to me?”

She sniffed. “At least you have the humility to admit I’m the better student.” She sobered then and looked at him with concern. “Just how inappropriate?”

He had grinned back and waved off her frown. The fact was, he wasn’t suffering for a lack of bed partners in his final year. He enjoyed that too, enjoyed the challenge of getting whatever he wanted from whoever he wanted. He’d had girls who thought they were going to wait for marriage, boys who thought they’d never even _touch_ another boy intimately in their lives. He’d had men with wives waiting for them at home, women who’d tragically never even got to _come_ with the men whose faces they forgot the instant he kissed them.

“If you want a turn,” he said, pitching the words as low and suggestive as he could, “you need only ask.”

She never did ask, though Percival spent many a night imagining how it would go if she _did_. Their working relationship in later life was probably saved by her lack of interest though and, lucky for him, she’d always been tactful enough to never mention his rather shameless past.

Once he left school, everything changed for him anyway. He had to become very serious very quickly when he trained as an Auror. The first time he tried to use his looks to get into the good graces of his mentor, he received a slap and a dressing-down that left his ears ringing.

“You’re damn talented, boy, without the need to prostitute yourself to me like this. If you ever even _think_ about trying it again, I’ll see that you never become an Auror, talent or no. Do I make myself clear?”

Everything had come easy to him at Ilvermorny: he’d had the good family name and the wealth that went with it (when his parents weren’t actively trying to disown him over his antics, that is), he was a naturally gifted student (even if he wasn’t in Seraphina’s league), and he always had his body to fall back on if those first things weren’t enough.

Auror training did _not_ come easy. To anyone. It took long hours and dedication, rigorous study and sleepless nights. You got by on hard work and merit, and you got out of it what you put in. It was viciously satisfying and everything Percival had hoped it would be. With all that to contend with, the trouble his appearance could get him into was no longer something he keenly sought out.

Then came the War. What did it matter if he had a pretty face when it was constantly covered in dirt and grime and blood? He lived in filth during that time. He _became_ filth when he had to. If any of his men looked at him for longer than they should, Percival ignored it.

It was somewhat different when he met Theseus Scamander—someone of equal rank and an Auror like himself. Someone with a sharp mind and soft mouth. He called Percival ‘beautiful’ and it had been a long, long time since Percival had felt anything close to that. He was unclean, fragmented, worn-out. Weren’t they all, after this?

“Say it again,” he had ordered, the words delivered straight into Theseus’s open, gasping mouth. His fingertips stroked curse scars and ones left by bullets alike.

“You’re beautiful. Stunning, gorgeous, handsome. Percival _, oh—_ ”

Following the end of the War, he came back to the States a different man. He threw himself into his work at MACUSA, dangerously obsessed with finding the type of combat he was struggling to leave behind. He wielded his looks as well as his wand to get what he craved, relying on the flash of his smile to procure crucial information for him, unbuttoning his shirt a little and letting the tilt of his hips gain him entry into joints a straight-laced Auror would never get a look in.

Eventually, he got promoted to Head Auror and then Director and he changed again. Now he buttoned _up_ to achieve the same effect. He armoured himself with expensive, exquisitely-tailored suits. He maintained a clean-shaven face and a severe haircut. His look was as intentional as it had ever been, but the intention now was to communicate power, to command respect.

He still casually read the minds of his colleagues in the hallways, a habit he found hard to break and one he didn’t particularly care to anyway. A healthy dose of paranoia never did a Director of Magical Security any harm.

Like his school days, he found a good number of lustful fantasies, centred mainly around how he looked underneath his suits and whether his passion for work extended into the bedroom. The difference now though was that these fantasies were tempered with cold dread at the very _idea_ of him ever finding out about them, ironically. People had become used to his reputation as a man married only to his work and some of them harboured the notion that he would be angry if anyone so much as indicated they would be interested in a romantic dalliance with him.

They were correct. His days of letting boys and girls trip over themselves while chasing after him were long gone. Now, he had to be incredibly motivated to instigate something himself, and he had not been so motivated in years by that point.

Then he met Credence Barebone.

 

* * *

 

The young man was surely as striking as Percival ever had been in his youth. More so, seeing as Percival was the beholder now rather than the beheld.

Definitely more so, in Percival’s eyes.

He was utterly captivated from the first moment he saw Credence. The effect was marred, of course, by the boy’s bad posture, his unflattering clothes and his deplorable haircut, but none of those things could fully quash his underlying appeal. There was no disguising his angular, symmetrical face, his generous mouth, the fathomless depths of his doe-like eyes.

He was divinity made mortal and attainable, with the character to match. How could someone be subjugated and abused for so long and remain kind enough to think of his others before himself always? How could he stand before Percival with the evidence of brutality carved into his perfect skin and look shocked when Percival had to remove it?

Percival fell in love. There was no avoiding it, despite how wrong it was of him given the differences in his situation and Credence’s. These things didn’t pay attention to propriety, they just were. His foolish heart hardly cared that he was nearly twice Credence’s age, or that he was a Wizard and Credence seemed to mysteriously have one foot in each world in a way that Percival was still looking into, or that he was powerful and Credence vulnerable, it just beat differently than it had before he knew him.

It raced when Credence blushed at their proximity sometimes, when he shivered at a guiding hand on his shoulder or—when Percival was more daring—his lower back.

He never prodded at Credence’s mind to check he wasn’t imagining the signals Credence was sending him. Although he longed to assure himself that Credence found him attractive in return, he couldn’t invade his mind without permission. Credence had been violated enough in life. For the same reason, Percival was never going to be the one to try to make any change their relationship.

All he could do was spend that bit longer on his hair in the mornings and press his clothes that bit crisper. He satisfied himself at work that a lot of people—both young and older—still wanted his hands on them. None of _them_ seemed to care about the wrinkles or the grey hairs he was becoming all too aware of.

He could only hope that Credence didn’t mind either.

 

* * *

 

Then… then everything really went to shit.

_‘Cursed with good looks’_

No, he would never understand that phrase. Not now he’d lost his so spectacularly.

 

* * *

 

“It looks as though you turned your head into the path of a curse, do you remember that?” the Healer asked.

Percival shrugged, or rather he attempted to with one arm cradled in a sling. “Not really,” he said, but he had a feeling it may well have been the first curse that Grindelwald levelled at him from behind. He could remember excruciating pain from his left eye, the one he couldn’t see out of now. He remembered blood dripping down his neck.

The witch gave him a sympathetic look that Percival had to turn away from. “Our best Healers here have examined your eye,” she said, “but I’m afraid there didn’t seem to be any hope for salvaging your sight.”

So Grindelwald had managed to do lasting, irreparable damage to him. Percival’s fingers scrabbled at the edges of the bandages around his face. “I want to see it,” he said.

The Healer’s hands covered his to stop him at once. “Mister Graves, it isn’t advisable to—”

“ _I want to see it_ ,” he repeated.

The witch pursed her lips. “Let me then,” she said.

Under her much gentler fingers, the bandages unravelled. When they came away, Percival felt bile rush to his throat. Somehow, he’d madly been expecting his vision to immediately improve without the covering. He still couldn’t see past the right side of his nose.

“Mirror,” he demanded. He’d spotted one on the table by the bed opposite his on the ward.

“Percival,” the witch said, as though the use of his first name might soothe him. It had the opposite effect.

“ _Accio mirror_ ,” he said firmly, hand outstretched. Proficient though he was in wandless magic, he still got a pang of concern when he realised that he had no wand in his possession. Surely his had been liberated from Grindelwald… but did he even want it back when it had been clutched in that impostor’s grubby mitt for so long?

The hand-mirror sailed over the curtain rail and straight into his palm.

For a moment, Percival just looked at himself. He had the insane urge to laugh, but he didn’t. He just shut his eyes and handed the mirror off to the Healer. He barely felt her take it.

“Finish up now,” he said to her. “Please.”

Before she drew back the curtain again, the Healer told him that his arm would be healed overnight (apparently it was easier to _remove_ the bones and regrow them than it would have been to fix what was left) and that his left leg, currently ballooned to twice its normal size, was steadily returning to normal. She finished by saying that he should remain on the ward for a week at least to manage his pain, to ensure he slept, and for observation in case of any lingering or as yet unmanifested magical effects of Grindelwald’s initial attack and subsequent torture.

“Do you want me to re-bandage that before I open the curtain?” the witch asked with a nod at his face.

“Does it _need_ bandaging?”

“The cuts are closed and scarring over already, and the eye doesn’t really need protection, so… no, it doesn’t.”

Percival couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. “Then why ask?”

 

* * *

 

He went back to work with no fanfare, as he had explicitly requested, but his return still caused a disturbance. If he was feared _before_ Grindelwald impersonated him, he certainly was after.

Whether that was down to a lingering concern that he _was_ Grindelwald still or whether it was due to his ruin of a face… Percival wouldn’t have liked to comment. For the first time, he avoided listening in on the thoughts of those he passed in the corridors. He didn’t want to see his face reflected at him in their minds constantly, didn’t want to hear guilt and _why didn’t we notice._

In many ways, the loss of his relative attractiveness _was_ no great loss to him. When he stood in front of a mirror each morning, the thing that made him grit his teeth was when he would go to shave the hair that _did_ still grow on the right side of his face and he would either miss completely or overreach and cut himself. _That_ was his concern—the loss of his depth perception, not the sight of his own reflection.

But even that paled in comparison to his concern for Credence, now the only thing in his life that he truly cared about. They had both been found, both been mended and restored, or at least the parts of them that could still be salvaged had.

Credence’s foot in the magical world was now planted firmly with his other in the No-Maj one. The destruction of the Obscurus had resulted in the destruction of whatever magical ability Credence possessed in the first place. While the Obscurus has always been thought of as a parasitical magical force, Percival couldn’t help but think of it another way: as a force for protection. It lashed out at those who sought to hurt its host and, ultimately, it died in order for Credence to _live_ , the last shreds of magic used up in gathering Credence’s earthly body back together so that he might rise like a phoenix from the ashes. And then that phoenix flew home to _him_ , the man with the face of his manipulator.

Except… except it wasn’t the same face anymore. Maybe that was what made it easier for Credence to accept the difference between the Percival Graves he first met and the usurper who exploited their closeness for his own gain.

He would never forget Credence, made new and unblemished by magic, touching the ugly lattice of scars that covered half of his face. He could still feel the crushing weight of his despair.

“What did he do to you?”

He would never forget Credence, wonderful, gentle creature that he is, wiping away a tear that had fallen from Percival’s blinded eye.

“I’ll take care of you.”

With that capacity for compassion and forgiveness after all that had been done to him… Percival was right. He really was divinity personified.

 

* * *

 

Time passes; they both heal. Credence finds work and independence outside of their house, Percival finds companionship and solace within it. When Credence had first returned to him, Percival had insisted he stay only if he was comfortable to, and Credence had accepted. The arrangement hasn’t ended or even been discussed again, but the truth of the matter doesn’t need to be spoken for either man to know—they don’t want to live apart now.

No one at MACUSA can find out, but if anyone ever _did_ , Percival knows he wouldn’t have any qualms leaving his life in New York behind and going _anywhere_ with Credence, as long as they were safe and together and it was what Credence wanted. That knowledge gives him serenity. He is only working for MACUSA presently because he’s good at it, because it’s the only career he’s ever wanted, and because his best chance of changing the law he’s breaking is from within.

He’s still hopelessly in love with Credence. He carries the familiar ache with him wherever he goes, the hurt made keener now that he sees Credence every single day and he has even _less_ to offer him than before. He can hardly believe he used to think the greying of his hair was a barrier. Now, he’s not only too old for Credence, he’s disfigured. There’s no other word for it.

When he walks around MACUSA these days, he can stand to hear what’s being thought about him again. There’s a total void of lust or longing now, only pity from those who like him well enough to care, regret for how he used to look, and still the odd bit of distress now and again. The last one mainly comes from new staff who aren’t used to him.

It’s a relief, after a fashion. No one _wants_ anything from him anymore, at least. But the flipside is that it’s all just damning proof that the one person _he_ wants will never want him back.

 

* * *

 

He leaves work early one day, up to date with everything and being encouraged to go by well-meaning colleagues who are finally starting to meet his eyes again. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have gone even with the encouragement, but he knows Credence has the day off today and, given the choice of _finding_ work for himself to do or going home to Credence… well, that’s no choice at all.

He Apparates into his sitting room and finds it empty. He treads lightly as he walks through the room, hoping he might manage to surprise Credence when he finds him. He often complains that Percival never takes the time off that’s owed to him, so he should be pleased that Percival has done just that for once.

His senses lead him to Credence in the end—the delicious scent of baking reaches him along with the sound of soft music playing from the kitchen. Sure enough, he finds Credence there, surrounded by the mess inherent in baking the No-Maj way, considering how many ingredients go into it. He’s oblivious to Percival being there: his back is turned to him while he looks out the window and listens to the radio while his creation cooks merrily away in the background.

He seems to be lost in thought and Percival doesn’t mean to look, he _doesn’t_ , but a close relationship with someone can make Legilimency as easy and as natural as it is for Queenie Goldstein with everyone she comes across. He’s attuned to Credence in a way he never has been with anyone else, and the sheer strength of _feeling_ in whatever he’s thinking means Percival gets suddenly assaulted with words and images.

To his absolute shock, they all relate to _him_.

Credence is thinking about that very morning, when he ate breakfast while Percival read his daily copy of _The Ghost_ and drank his coffee before leaving for work. He’s thinking—Merlin’s _beard_ —about the pinch between Percival’s eyebrows as he concentrated on whatever article he was reading and how much he loves that crease to distraction. He’s breathless with the memory of thinking _look up at me, look at me_ , heart thrumming faster in his chest with the recollection of every time Percival’s eyes _have_ landed on him and how that made him feel.

He’s recreating the slope of Percival’s nose in his mind, the dip of his philtrum below it, the shape of his mouth and jaw. He’s imagining _kissing_ Percival, cheeks glowing and palms sweating as he does. It’s not the first time, going by the highly specific notions he has about what exactly that would feel like. Soft lips, warm, wet mouth and _ecstasy, bliss, completion_.

Percival wishes he could find something to grip onto without alerting Credence to his presence with the noise. He genuinely feels weak as the barrage of adoration continues to hit him.

And it _is_ adoration, pure and simple. Credence is thinking now of the glint of Percival’s eyelashes in the sunlight streaming through the front window that morning, imagining the rasp he would feel if he stroked his fingertips over Percival’s as-yet unshaven cheek. He’s thinking about Percival’s hands shaking out the newspaper, the contrasting strength and delicacy of them. He’s thinking about tender touches, a thumb at the corner of his mouth, a palm in the centre of his chest. He wants those things so badly and Percival’s stomach clenches at how sweetly innocent his desires are.

 _I know,_ he thinks with all the ardour he feels in return, even though Credence can’t read _his_ thoughts. _I know, I know._

Credence is honestly, sincerely thinking about how handsome Percival is. And not a memory of him when they first met either, not that intact, unspoiled version of him or the bastard fraud who wore that same face. He’s picturing Percival as he is now, patchwork scars and milky sightless eye, all of it. And he’s thinking that _that_ Percival would never go for him.

Is the boy out of his mind?

_“Credence.”_

He startles at his name, turning around right away. His face is burning, mind clamouring with _stop thinking about it, stop sullying him that way_.

“You could never,” Percival tells him and Credence frowns.

“Are you all right?” he asks. “You’re home early, are you sick?”

“I’m not sick, but I’m not all right. I haven’t been since the moment you came into my life and enchanted me.”

Credence crosses his arms over his chest protectively. “I don’t understand.”

“I do though,” Percival says, “I do now, Credence. _Credence_ —”

And just like that he’s crossing the room, drawn to Credence like a moth to a flame, a flower to the light. He places a thumb at the corner of his mouth, a palm in the centre of his chest. Credence’s lips part and his heart beats frantically beneath Percival’s hand.

For all that time before Grindelwald, Percival had been an object of lust. Never, _not once_ has he been an object of love like this.

“Do you want me to kiss you?” he asks shakily, because, despite what he saw in Credence’s mind, he needs it confirmed aloud. He can’t—he _won’t_ be the mutilated monster projecting his own wants onto the perfect dove before him.

“More than anything.”

And there it is. Credence’s hands come up to hold his face, so gentle, so reverential that Percival almost wants to cry with heartache for something he already has, something he doesn’t have to miss anymore. It’s being _offered_. He just has to accept it.

Besides, it’s been his life’s main purpose for months now: what Credence wants, Credence gets.

He dips his head and kisses him, waiting for Credence’s eyes to flutter shut before closing his own.

When Credence surges up like the tide against him, a sound of urgency in his throat as he returns the kiss with all his might, Percival’s head spins with the thought that this, _this_ is the most desirable he’s felt in his entire life.

**Author's Note:**

> I know, "that's not how Legilimency works"!
> 
> Thanks to everyone on tumblr who encouraged me to dip my toe into this fandom properly.


End file.
